This is very good news. The five major banks had been negotiating for a very broad immunity from their crimes during these last years of foreclosure. As I have pointed out many times before – here, here and here, signing false affidavits is a crime not a mistake. The banks were falsely swearing before a judge that the documents had been examined and everything was in order so that the cases could go forward. But by simply having a nobody sign a document they insured that people who owned their own homes and people that were up on the payments would be thrown out as well as those in default. That’s the idea behind affidavits, that we avoid injustice. The banks want immunity for having done these things.

The Obama Administration wants a quick settlement and no doubt is looking for “look forward, not back” scenario. I am too. I am looking forward to the day when I look back on the Obama years as an American aberration like the pet rock craze or maybe cabbage patch dolls.

The California Attorney General refuses to go along with the broad immunity agreement and wants more for the citizens of California so cruelly stolen from by these mortgage holders. Justice has a small victory today.

California breaks from 50-state probe into mortgage lenders

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation’s biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

“It has been a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient,” Harris told The Times in an interview.